Summary: New research suggests a metabolite produced after eating dietary soy may reduce a key risk factor for dementia. Source: University of Pittsburgh A metabolite generated from soy in the gut—when the right bacteria are present—may be linked to lower levels of brain white matter damage, a new study led by the University of Pittsburgh … Read more

Summary: New research shows that visual cues—such as watching a speaker’s lips—help the brain amplify relevant sounds by synchronizing auditory processing with what we see. Source: UCL Watching someone’s lips improves listening in noisy places because visual timing cues help the brain boost the sounds that match what the eyes are seeing, according to a … Read more

Summary: A new study reveals how the brain organizes and reuses neural representations to perceive and remember everyday events. Source: WUSTL A new study from Washington University provides fresh, detailed insight into how the human brain encodes and later recalls ordinary, real-world events. Zachariah Reagh, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington … Read more

Summary: New research indicates that body dissatisfaction is a principal driver of eating disorders, with perimenopausal women particularly affected. Source: NAMS Eating disorders are often thought of as conditions that mainly affect adolescents and young adults. However, accumulating evidence shows these mental health disorders can emerge at any stage of a woman’s life, including during … Read more

Researchers at The University of Queensland have taken a significant step toward understanding brain damage that could eventually improve outcomes for stroke survivors. An international team led by scientists at UQ has produced findings that clarify mechanisms behind unilateral spatial neglect, a disabling condition that often follows right-hemisphere brain injury after stroke. People with this … Read more

Summary: Ever wondered why you rarely notice an itch during intense, high-pressure moments? Researchers have now mapped a brain circuit that explains this effect. Their work shows how a group of neurons in the lateral hypothalamus acts like a biological “mute button” for itch during acute stress, and how prolonged stress can reverse that protection … Read more

Summary: Researchers report that psilocybin—the active compound in so‑called “magic mushrooms”—showed comparable antidepressant effects to a commonly prescribed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (escitalopram) in a controlled clinical trial. Although the primary statistical comparison did not reach conventional significance, participants receiving psilocybin experienced faster and larger reductions in depressive symptoms, and higher rates of remission and … Read more

Neuroscientists from Tübingen and Okasaki show that tiny eye movements filter “important” stimuli and relay them to the brain. Researchers from the Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN) at the University of Tübingen and the Okasaki National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS) in Japan report a parsimonious mechanism that reframes how we think about … Read more

Summary: Researchers report that the widely used pain reliever acetaminophen taken during pregnancy is linked with a higher risk of behavioral problems in children. Source: JAMA Network. New analysis published in JAMA Pediatrics finds maternal acetaminophen use during pregnancy is associated with increased risk of behavioral difficulties in offspring. Acetaminophen (also known as paracetamol) is … Read more

Summary: A new study comparing stroke survivors and healthy older adults shows that language difficulties after stroke arise not from slower hearing but from weaker neural integration of speech sounds. Although patients detected sounds at the same speed as controls, their brains encoded speech features far less strongly—especially when words were ambiguous or difficult to … Read more